Brain and other organ surgery involve complex surgical procedures to access intricate and delicate portions of tissue. Oftentimes, surgeons will image areas of a patient's body where the surgery is to be performed. These images help surgeons plan how the surgery is to be performed, identify specific areas of tissue that need to be accessed, and determine pathways through the body for surgical tools and cameras to access the target tissue.
In a typical surgery, surgeons will generally first image an area of a patient where the surgery is to be performed. Surgeons will meticulously review these images to plan how the surgery is to be preformed. Even during surgery, surgeons may again review physical copies of these images or access a video monitor and scroll through the images as a way to refresh their memory or to help determine their bearings. An issue with this procedure is that it requires surgeons to look at the surgical site, then direct their attention to a video monitor or physical images, and then redirect their attention back to the patient. In other words, the surgeons have to mentally relate the images to the anatomy of the patient.
This diversion of attention between patient and images may be mentally taxing on a surgeon during a relatively long surgery. This may also extend the length of a surgery if a surgeon has to refer to the images many times. Further, this may be especially tricky and time consuming for a surgeon when an orientation of the images does not match up to the surgeon's current view of the patient. For instance, a set of images of an MRI scan of a patient's head may include hundreds of individual images layered in a straight and level orientation. A surgeon looking down at the top of the patient's head to determine where to make an incision to reach a deeply embedded tumor has to construct and rectify in his mind: (1) the different layers of MRI images between the top of the head and the level of the tumor, (2) the orientation of the MRI images versus the orientation of the patient, and (3) the specific location on the MRI images as corresponding to an actual location on the patient.
To increase the accuracy of incisions made during surgery and to decrease the amount of surgery time, it is desirable to provide surgeons with new types of imaging systems. Accordingly, a need exits for further development of imaging systems.